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Signature of Charles Dickens

Hello, I am new to this site. I would like to know if Charles Dickens every did any art work? I have uncovered, under a very old painting, an etching signed C Dickens. It would be nice if it was Charles but of course it could be any old C Dickens! It is entitled "Old Village Teahouse Southborough." I have some very old Dickens books with illustrations all done by other people. Does anyone have a copy of his signature? Can anyone help me please?

Little Dorrit: ABC TV, 27 June 2010, 8:35 p.m.

THANKS CHARLES
Although I was a student then teacher of English literature and composition at all levels of the educational process, from primary to post-secondary school from the 1950s through the 1990s, I never really got ‘into’ the works of Charles Dickens(1812-1870). None of his books were ever on any of the curricula that I had to teach. The opening sentence to one of my all time favorite books in the world The Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger placed my attitude as a young and middle-aged man to Charles Dickens and his books. That sentence read: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know about my life is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap..." As I got into late adulthood, though, the years after 60, according to one model of human development in the lifespan, I began to take an interest in Dickens, his life and his writings.

Tonight I watched the first of a new mini-series Little Dorrit. It was screened in the U.K. in 2008, in the USA in 2009 and now it was here in Australia in 2010.1 Little Dorrit was published between 1855 and 1857. It was, among other things, an indictment of the British system of justice. Virginia Woolf maintained, in a helpful turn of phrase, that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens," as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks."

All authors might be said to incorporate autobiographical elements in their fiction or, in my case, in their poetry. With both Dickens and I, though, this autobiographical aspect to their writing is very noticeable. Dickens took pains to mask what he considered his shameful, lowly past. I do not take pains to mask my life, my relationships, my religion or my mental-illness, although I certainly do not reveal-all. Dickens's own father was sent to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books. The detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in Little Dorrit resulted from Dickens's own experiences of that institution. The delightful Claire Foy, as Amy Dorrit, is an idealised character; this idealising of character serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. An important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions. I, too, found, this aspect of public reaction important in my writing on the internet since I retired from FT, PT and casual work in the years 1999 to 2005.-Ron Price with thanks to 1ABC TV, 27 June 2010, 8:35 p.m.

Well, Charles, I can understand
your despair about society and
those seemingly unbridgeable
gaps..Yes, people do so stick
to their beliefs---assumptions
about life with their emotions
wrapped around them—their
faith, Charles, that’s their faith.
We all have our faith; for each
of us our faith decides what our
mountains are from day to day..

Yes, Charles, we all go on our
pilgrimage in search of eternity
as restless travellers in search of
our true selves often imprisoned
as they are in the greatest prison
of all---the prison of self.1 Thank
you, Charles, for so many things:
helping me with my writing, my
autobiographical self and listening
to my readers as best I can before
writing more in my serialized and
seemingly endless prose---poetry.

1 Takao Saijo, “Charles Dickens: His Novels and Society,” Internet Site, 27 June 2010. This term ‘the prison of self’ is also one found in the Baha’i writings which have been important to me for nearly 60 years.

Ron Price
27 June 2010

Ron Price is a Canadian who has been living in Australia for 42 years(in 2013). He is married to a Tasmanian and has been for 37 years after 8 years in a first marriage. At the age of 69 he now spends most of his time as an author and writer, poet and publisher. editor and researcher, online blogger, essayist, journalist and engaging in independent scholarship. He has been associated with the Baha'i Faith for 60 years and a member for 53 years.cool:

C. Dickens etching

I too, have an etching signed C. Dickens. It is of Shakespeare's home in Stratford upon Avon. I thought I had something very special....but alas, I see it is not particularly unique after all. Oh well.

Belated thanks, Taffs and sidney7. I think I'll add a little something on Dickens before parting from this site.-Ron
---------------------

I wrote the following: Happy Birthday Charles Dickens on his 200th birthday.

ENGENDERING TOOL

There is a discipline, an earnestness, a self-reliance, that enables me to create myself, find my origins, in this poetry. This poetry is an engendering tool for making myself, defining myself, my life, like some progeny. Perhaps I am laying to rest the ghost of my father; perhaps I am fathering myself or replacing my father, here; perhaps I am creating sons to engage their figurative father. To some extent I am creating and communicating authority. -Ron Price with thanks to Dianne F. Sadoff, “Language Engenders: David Copperfield and Great Expectations” in Modern Critical Views: Charles Dickens, editor, Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, NY, 1987, pp.181-195.

No matter how much, or how deep, I probe
there is only so much of myself I can create.

This engendering tool produces only a child
which although, perhaps, my secret essence
is another than me....Like a bird which has
flown, it has flown and the nest is not the
bird; it is some mystery among mysteries,
a harbinger, a base and appetitive nature,
some leavening powder, power, exalted
above egress and regress, at the acme of
mature contemplation where helplessness
resides and where thought comes to its end.

Dickens was asked what he meant when he said he did not understand himself. He said that he never really understood what he meant. “What do my novels mean?” “They mean only that I have finished them and, in the act of completion, some new truth is revealed. Dickens saw himself as a mystery too deep to fathom. His books he felt as if they had been written by someone else. -Ron Price with thanks to Charles Dickens in Charles Dickens: A Biography, Peter Ackroyd, pp.754-755.

Some mystery,
some leaven,
some power,
and so I write,
a poetic voice,
for that is me,
something from souls,
faithful souls,
gone to the great beyond,
but linked
so unobtrusively,
so seductively,
as to remain
forever,
utterly mysterious,
totally concealed
in each melody.

Ron Price
12/9/'99
---------------------
PS I wrote the above in my first months after taking a sea-change at the age of 55 to Tasmania and away from the world of FT work.

Ron Price is a Canadian who has been living in Australia for 42 years(in 2013). He is married to a Tasmanian and has been for 37 years after 8 years in a first marriage. At the age of 69 he now spends most of his time as an author and writer, poet and publisher. editor and researcher, online blogger, essayist, journalist and engaging in independent scholarship. He has been associated with the Baha'i Faith for 60 years and a member for 53 years.cool: